white ground?

**John Arnold** · 08-08-2009, 09:38 AM

12/ 2 with ground, but the ground is white? I don't recall seeing this before.

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**Rick Cantrell** · 08-08-2009, 11:03 AM

2006 IRC
E3307.2 Equipment grounding conductors.

Equipment
grounding conductors of sizes 6 AWG and smaller shall be
identified by a continuous green color or a continuous green
color with one or more yellow stripes on the insulation or covering,
except where bare. Conductors with insulation or individual

covering that is green, green with one or more yellow stripes, or otherwise identified as permitted by this section shall not be used for ungrounded or grounded circuit conductors. ...

**John Kogel** · 08-09-2009, 09:26 AM

Originally Posted by John Arnold

12/ 2 with ground, but the ground is white? I don't recall seeing this before.

Never seen that before and it looks like trouble for neutral and ground connections at the fixtures.

**Jerry Peck** · 08-09-2009, 02:42 PM

Originally Posted by John Kogel

looks like trouble for neutral and ground connections at the fixtures.

Agreed.

**Bill Kriegh** · 08-09-2009, 05:51 PM

Check the other end of one or two of the cables and see what's there.

Very early in my career I was there when an inspector showed up and informed the lead electrician that "you really don't think the code book means for you to leave a bare wire in the box, do you?" And, after a heated discussion pieces of white insulation were slid over the ground wires as "it wouldn't be right to use red or black"

Anyway, after this idiot left we removed the white insulation again. I guess this is the only time I ever saw 2 "white" wires in an NM cable with one black and I've heard the story about "no bare wires in the box" more than once.

I guess the point is you MAY not actually have 2 white wires in the cable

**Jerry Peck** · 08-09-2009, 07:21 PM

Bill,

Never heard of that. Interesting.

However, that did bring back a memory for old times ... I knew an electrician friend who did most service work - repairs and adding lights, switches, etc., and he said that he would on occasion when there was no way to run a switch leg slide insulation over the bare ground at each end of the cable and use the ground for the switch leg, allowing him to have a hot, a neutral, and a switch leg, and did not have a ground.

He was one of those older electricians who was there long before grounds where and he figured that if people got by for decades without grounds it would be okay to 'get by without a ground in this case'. Grounds had only been required for maybe 2-3 code cycles at that time and some older electricians did not always readily to the changes.

Just another thing to check - make sure that actually does go to ground.